Review: PRINCESS AI

 I know some might fuss over including this title here, considering its reputation and the fact that it was so closely tied to Tokyopop's controversial OEL initiative.  This one did run in a shojo magazine (even if its sequel and spinoffs are pure OEL), so it count for my purposes.  Plus, this year marks its 20th anniversary so now's as good a time to look back on it as any.

PRINCESS AI (Purinsesu Ai Monogatari), written by DJ Milky and Courtney Love, with character designs by Ai Yazawa and art by Misaho Kujiradou.  First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

A beautiful young woman from another world wakes up confused and alone in a Tokyo alleyway.  She can't remember anything clearly save for her name: Ai.  Fortunately for her, Ai meets up with Kent, a sensitive college student who takes her in.  She's also fortunate enough to possess the singing voice of an angel, and she soon becomes a sensation at the strip club where she works.  Alas, there are dark forces coming for Ai, be they greedy record executives or demons from Ai's original world who want her dead.

 STORY:

I imagine those of you who read this blog on the regular would expect me to hate Princess Ai. 

After all, it's the creation of Tokyopop creator/former CEO/professional douchebag Stu Levy, under his ridiculous pseudonym "DJ Milky."  From the start he conceived it as his own little homegrown multimedia franchise, one he would shill for the better part of a decade.  He borrowed a few broad ideas from fading rock star Courtney Love (who saw this manga as a way to peddle a solo album and extend her career for a little longer).  Much ado was made in its initial promotion over the involvement of Nana/Paradise Kiss creator Ai Yazawa, neglecting to mention that the entirety of her contribution was designing the title character and that a different, lesser-known mangaka was the real artist behind it.  It is a project that beginning to end was steeped in corporate cynicism.

Even putting all that backstory aside, Princess Ai is a pretty flawed work.  A lot of those flaws are little and annoying ones.  Take for example Hikaru, the openly gay roommate of Ai's love interest Kent.  Hikaru's entire purpose is to be clingy comic sissy who hates Ai on sight for being competition for his precious Kent and every panel he's in is just painful.   He's also apparently a drag queen on the side, because why else would have a closet full of gothloli ensembles just the right size for Ai to rip up and wear?  Then there's her "songs," which consist of some of the most dreadful poetry you will ever read.  I don't entirely know how Stu Levy managed to channel the cringiness of a teenage mall goth who nearly flunked English into his "lyrics" despite being a grown-ass, middle-aged, college-educated man but like life itself he found a way.  

Other issues are much bigger, built into its very structure.  The reader never gets a clear idea of what kind of character Ai is supposed to be.  Is she an innocent, alone and unsure in a strange new world?  Is she a hard-rocking rebel who doesn't take guff from anyone?  Is she an inspirational figure of positivity and girl power?  She shifts personality on a dime to whatever the story needs her to be and it's very unnatural.  It's also not hard to shake that the whole thing is assembled from whatever buzzwords Stu thought would appeal to manga-reading teen girls in the mid 2000s.  It's got romance! Goth-loli fashion! J-rock! GIRUGUMESH!

Despite all this, I can see why this would have resonated with teen girls of the time.  They could see something of themselves in Ai and her quest to find her identity and place in the world.  They would view her star-is-born music career as an inspirational fantasy.  Yes, it's true that both of these plots are well-worn to the point of cliche, but for them it would still be fresh.  For all the criticisms I have about the work and its creation I still found it compulsively readable, so I guess somebody did something right.

ART:

Most of that credit for 'doing something right' should go not to the writer(s) but to Misaho Kujiradou herself.  While her art is not as ornate as Yazawa's original sketches, it's not without its charms.  While her characters are quite lanky, their loose-limb poses and evocative faces gives the cast (and Ai in particular) an appealing liveliness.  It's also drawn quite delicately, with little in the way of backgrounds or screentones to weigh it down.  Kujiradou notes herself how much she enjoyed drawing Ai's gothloli fashions, and you can tell by the way she puts so much effort into drawing them.  The only visual element that doesn't work can be blamed on James Dashiell's lettering.  The beings from Ai's original world have all their dialogue written in a spiky gothic font that is both hard to parse and incredibly dated.

RATING:

I cannot pretend that Princess Ai is any sort of forgotten masterpiece, but neither is it a complete disaster.  It's a pulpy shojo series that's mostly carried by its art, and anyone who can put aside its cynical history and can get in touch with their inner teen girl may be able to appreciate it for what it is.

This manga was published by Tokyopop.  This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available.  All 3 were released in single volumes and a single omnibus; both are currently out of print.